Greetings everyone! I hope you are all doing fine. Today, I have brought another article to this community which is related to a contest about “Exams” organized by brother @simonnwigwe. And I must say that he has done a great job by organizing this contest because it is a topic on which everyone can share their experiences and write something. The reason for this is that everyone goes through the stages of exams in their educational career.

When I saw the announcement post for this contest, I immediately decided to participate. Today being Sunday, I thought of taking advantage of my free time and writing a post. In this post, I will also share some experiences of my university days so please read till the end.

How do you prepare for an examination?

The answer to this question depends on which stage of your educational career you are in. If I talk about my school life, I used to do my daily work every day and tried to take as few leaves from school as possible because when you don’t go to school regularly, the burden of the previous days’ work increases and you fall behind the rest of the class.

Both my parents were teachers themselves so they guided me properly. That’s why I didn’t have to do any special preparation during exam days because I already remembered everything. In college life, I became a little relaxed and studied on weekends. The pressure of college exams was felt a bit more but thank God I was able to handle it.

University life is a different story altogether. Sometimes even several days would pass without me even touching my books. The reason is that in university, you are not asked like a child if you have done your work today or not. All students are mature and understand their own good and bad. Also, since it is a semester system, you can easily prepare for exams one week before the exam provided that you have attended all lectures and your concepts are clear.

Do you have any trick that you have developed over time that works perfectly for you?

There is no specific trick. However, when you are consistent and keep studying little by little along the way, you don’t have any issues during exam days. My strategy has always been to make lecture notes and read them at least once daily. In school days, I used to cram but later in college and university, I started clearing my concepts and instead of writing lines from books by cramming, I started writing on my own which helped me a lot.

When is your favourite time to study for an examination and why?

Whenever I was in the mood to study, I would find a quiet place and start studying. But my favorite study time was during exam days when I would study from 8pm to 11:30pm at night and from 4am to 6am in the morning which I found to be the best time for studying.

Do you feel scared when going in for exams? How have you been able to control or fight this feeling?

There is always a pressure of exams that no one can deny. But as time passes, you learn to manage many things and this pressure decreases, especially if you have prepared well for the exams then you don’t have much of an issue. But if you go to exams without preparation, you definitely get nervous. I would like to share my MS research story here and I have some pictures of those moments saved so I will definitely share them in this post.

As soon as our MS coursework was completed, we were told to submit our research proposal, also known as a synopsis, within fifteen days. During those days COVID had arrived and the rest of the classes were given a break but the research students had to come to the university.

In the picture below, you can see how we were sitting and making our research proposal. We took a selfie while sitting but later a guard came and made us get up because only 2 people were allowed to sit on one bench and we were three sitting. All this was happening because of COVID.

Anyway, our MS research finally started but it was a new experience because until now we had only studied things theoretically and now we had to go to the lab and work every day.

After completing the lab work, we had to submit our thesis. Writing the thesis, getting it checked by the supervisor, correcting mistakes was a very stressful task. But finally it was completed.

On the day we had to submit our thesis, we were very happy that we were finally free. We took some pictures that day which I am sharing below.

Finally, a few days later our convocation took place and we received our degrees.

Now this whole process may seem simple but it is not. I added all this to give the post a more realistic look. I wanted to convey that there is definitely pressure of exams and study but if you don’t lose courage and keep working hard continuously then all these stages pass one by one and you definitely achieve success.

What advice do you have to give to those who still find it difficult to prepare for an exam?

Preparing for exams can be a little challenging but if you follow a proper study plan, it becomes easier. You can prioritize some topics according to your subjects, study past papers to see what kind of questions have been asked in previous exams. Take guidance from your teachers and seniors and especially take care of your health because if you fall ill during exam days, you won’t be able to study properly. If you follow these things, you will definitely succeed in exams.

^{Author: @waqarahmadshah | Achievement 1}